France's National Commission for Information Technology and Freedoms (CNIL, the body that monitors the use of personal data) has fined Amazon's subsidiary in the country €32 million for the “excessive” system it uses to monitor its employees in the warehouses. As the French regulator announced on its website this Tuesday, the sanction was agreed on December 27 after several inspections.
The CNIL points out that its investigations began with some press articles describing “certain practices that the company applies in its warehouses” and that it also received “several complaints from workers”. As part of its “control missions”, the regulator was able to check the functioning of the system through which Amazon France Logistique (the logistics subsidiary of the American multinational) provides each of its employees with a scanner that monitors numerous actions.
Through this scanner, the company is able to record in real time the execution of some tasks such as the storage of an item and its packaging. But this data is also stored and linked to the profile of each employee, which “allows the calculation of a series of indicators that report on the quality, productivity and periods of inactivity of each employee individually.” And that was the reason for imposing a fine on Amazon : “The CNIL considered that the system for monitoring the activity and performance of workers was excessive,” explains the organization.
The decision is essentially based on three reasons. The first is that the French boss considers it “illegal” to introduce a system “that measures work interruptions so precisely and forces the worker to potentially have to justify any break or interruption”.
The second issue that worried the CNIL was the measurement of the speed of use of the scanner during warehouse work. The statement said: “Based on the principle that objects scanned too quickly increase the risk of errors, an indicator measures whether an object was scanned less than 1.25 seconds after the previous one.” And the regulator’s verdict is that this procedure is “excessive”.
The same conclusion (which is “exaggerated”) is reached when analyzing Amazon’s decision in France to “temporarily retain all data collected by the device as well as the resulting statistical indicators for all employees and contractors”. and to keep them for 31 days.”
The CNIL also points out that it is aware that there are conditions relating to Amazon's activities that “may justify the use of a scanning device to manage its activities”. However, it reiterates its conclusion that “the storage of all this data and statistical indicators is disproportionate worldwide” and that the system “strictly monitored the employees in all the tasks they performed with the scanners and imposed continuous pressure on them.” Therefore the fine of 32 million euros, which took into account both the number of employees (“several thousand”) subject to the controversial system and the “competitive advantage” that Amazon thereby gained over other companies, which led to “economic profits”. .”
Amazon France Logistique is wholly owned by the American multinational through another company, Luxembourg-based Amazon EU. The French subsidiary of the online trading giant achieved a turnover of 1,135 million euros in 2021 and made a profit of almost 59 million euros that year, according to the figures included in the case file by the CNIL.
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